


Shades of Night

by theowlandtheunicorn



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: And Working, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Season/Series 02, send help, with a healthy dose of Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theowlandtheunicorn/pseuds/theowlandtheunicorn
Summary: "You are going to be alright."
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 30
Kudos: 87





	Shades of Night

Reality hits cold and hard while he’s still trying to expel the phantom river from his lungs, still trying to save the rotting body in his arms, still struggling to escape its heaviness.

There are real hands in front of him, the only thing that is living, rushing and scrambling, scrambling to stop him from falling back into the water.

His heart pulls him back with a throb and the hotel room swims into focus. It seems as if it was only moments ago that he was jolted from the nothingness he’d drifted off to by the sound of someone else’s sob and rustle of sheets. 

_“Ellie-”_

_“I’m fine. Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”_

His hand fell, then. Because he understood. Her pain is like a guillotine, sharp and blind, snapping at anything that tries to approach, however benevolent. It will stay like that for a while. Yet he yearned to approach her with all the words he knew he could not say, merge her pain with his, blend them together until they were undistinguishable. Give in to the need for some untainted human contact just a little, just for that night, why not. And felt deprived of all those things he knew were not in the cards.

Only her hand does come to rest upon his arm. Messy-haired and puffy-eyed, still half-clutched by her own nightmare, she meets his gaze unflinchingly, with determination that pierces through to his very core.

“You are going to be alright.”

He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and he’s too weak for either. The tears come anyway.

“Hey!”

She grips his arm even firmer.

“I mean it. There will come a day when you’re going to remember this from a place of happiness.”

He looks at her. Still struggling to breathe. Still trying to come up.

“Yes, you. And me as well.”

Her comfort is steel. Her own tears are like lightning bolts in her eyes. She doesn’t let him look away.

“Because oh, I am just _sick_ of this. My life is absolute _shit_ right now and yours is so much shitter than I ever gave you credit for, but we’re going to come through to the other side and we’re going to be alright. We’re going to solve this case and you’re going to get your heart surgery and you’re going to be free, and one day when all of this is a distant memory and all the pain will have faded away, you’ll remember these moments and you’ll think: ‘Oh that Ellie Miller, what a clever woman, she was right all along.’”

He doesn't respond.

“Agree with me, Hardy, for God’s sake!” she pleads.

It’s not how it goes, he almost says. Memories stay as playthings for guilt and pain doesn’t fade away so much as lose its edge so it’s not a sharp knife that's sticking out of you but a dull one, and maybe it haunts your dreams instead of your every waking moment but it’s there, it's always there, pulling and ripping apart as you struggle to breathe, grasping at life, too tired to make sense of it all.

He doesn't say it. Despair hasn't conquered her. She doesn't need to hear it.

And who knows. Maybe the universe will have mercy on her after all, even if he probably won’t be there to see it.

Him, though?

Chance would be a fine thing.

His breaths are still haggard things finding their way through the water in his throat, so he just nods. Her eyes soften. She doesn’t remove her hand until he calms down.

A tiny fraction of him crawls onto this and clutches at it like it’s the only dry piece of land to keep him from drowning.

*

The morning is a blank, and the events of the following days are all blurred, trailing off in various different directions. He isn’t sure what made him remember. Perhaps it’s just the exact same shade of night on the opposite wall, as everything else is different.

Well, except for one thing.

He turns towards the sleeping form on his left. She breathes slow, soft and deep and he wants and also doesn’t want to wake her, but the impulse to touch her is too strong. His arm comes to rest over her heart.

She draws sleepily closer as if by a magnet, feet tangling into his legs, her back nestling against his chest, and it makes him smile. The hair that he sometimes finds his mouth full of upon waking is dormant, and he buries his face into it. Presses his nose against her neck, breathes in the faint scent of almonds from her shower and the pureness of her skin underneath.

“You were right,” he murmurs.

“Hmm?”

He plants a kiss in the back of her head and closes his eyes.

“Nothing. Sleep, love.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've no idea how active the fandom still is, and I've no idea if anyone needed to read this, but I needed to write it, so here I am. Falling in love with these two all over again. Come say hi, I love hearing what you think <3


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